Allies By Allan Gratz, was recommended to me by my brother (the one time he is actually useful). This book was actually quite interesting. At first, my main purpose was to make fun of my brother’s taste, but I ended up loving it! I never really thought I enjoyed books about wars until I read this master piece. This book is about the Allied invasion of France opposing Nazi Germany. The main protagonist in this book is a 16 year old kid named Dietrich Zimmermann, except everyone formally knows him as Douglas Carpenter, but call him Dee (as a nickname). Dee is under this guise because he is actually German.
Would Sid care that Dee’s parents had disagreed with Hitler? Would Sid care that they had run away to America so Dee wouldn’t be brainwashed to hate everyone who wasn’t a ‘pure’ German? That Dee had been in America for almost his whole life, so long that he had lost any trace of his German accent? (page 18)
This quotation highlights Dee’s anxiousness as he thinks over Sid’s attitude towards him if his friend discovers his ancestry. He knows very well that Sid hates the Germans with every bone in his body (Sid is Jewish and is made fun of that often). Dee is a very close friend of Sid, but he feels guilty the more he lies. I could really understand Dee on an emotional level when the narrator mentions how anxious Dee feels about his background. He feels like an outsider. Which can be the situation for many people as I’ve seen in my life. He wants to tell people about his ancestry and be able to explain why he is there. Yet, at the same time, he finds a need of lying.